


The Ballad of Schmitty Blues

by rorywritesstuff



Category: Original Work
Genre: Other, Poetry, Reviews, Soul Selling, critics
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-05
Updated: 2017-12-05
Packaged: 2019-02-10 21:13:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 831
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12920361
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rorywritesstuff/pseuds/rorywritesstuff
Summary: A poem about a singer who sells his soul for good reviews.





	The Ballad of Schmitty Blues

Pity bitty Schmitty Blues  
Sold his soul for good reviews  
Any critics he could broker  
At best would call him mediocre  
While some would be a lot more harsh  
"He'd should throw his strummer in the marsh,"  
He was sick of getting dreadful notice  
So he assumed the pose of Evil Lotus,  
Played a chord and called out twice  
Then felt his skin crawl with ice  
The Devil rose in a puff of smoke  
And screams were heard whene'er he spoke  
"You want your "art" to be acclaimed,  
Cheers attendant when you are named?  
You wish your status elevated,  
Great renown for what you've created,  
Trophies, medals, things like these,  
And some honorary PhD's?  
I can give the life you crave  
But nothing then your soul will save  
No redemption for you, Orpheus  
When you die, you come to us."  
Schmitty paused, he gave it thought  
His soul in hell for the life he sought  
As he thought, he played a tune in idol  
And the devil tried not to bridle  
"Ok, I'll do it!" Schmitty cried  
And reality transmogrified  
Ear drums were subtly altered  
So that where Schmitty's music once had faltered  
Now it sang like a bird  
The sweetest tone you ever heard  
Critics were fired for daring slur  
Such an avant-garde musiqueur  
Every magazine of note  
Jumped aboard the Schmitty boat  
And as his fans grew in hoardes  
Of course, there followed some awards  
He won a grammy, then another  
He sent them both back to his mother  
Who'd kicked him out of the family pad  
When he'd deafened his poor old dad  
The statues arrived with a note  
"Shove these in your ears, you aged goat!"  
Schmitty's star rose and rose  
At least, it did among those  
Who considered themselves in the know  
Who closely watched the ebb and flow  
Of opinion; the cool, the smartest  
The kind of guys who liked 'The Artist'  
They told themselves they made the taste  
I don't know on what evidence this was based  
For they held no sway in that other faction  
Those who use music as a distraction  
Those who didn't care unless the song was pretty-  
And they had never heard of Schmitty  
Indeed, he could walk down the street  
And not be recognised as elite  
And though he claimed to be no boaster  
At times he'd stand beneath his own poster  
And even with the heaping praise  
Schmitty still spent many days  
Sitting lonesome with his strummer  
Why, he might as well have been a drummer!  
Yes, he had fans in roving scores  
But he found them all such massive bores  
And while he liked it when they sang his praises  
He wished they'd use more variant phrases  
The money he'd begun to make  
Would hardly cause the bank to break  
The record company took a share  
Of sales that were light as air  
In his dreams, he'd toured and toured  
On a private yacht he could afford  
But even as the critics glowed  
He couldn't get a show on the road  
He tried to meet those he'd admired  
To whose fame he had aspired  
But no one wanted to give quarter  
To an act so clearly dead in the water  
They might indulge a flash-in-the-pan  
But Schmitty was just an also-ran  
More albums came, more albums went  
Praise was given for what that meant  
He won awards, he was on Times  
He strummed some chords, he wrote some rhymes  
Interviews he often gave  
Listen to those pundits rave!  
Each turn of phrase, every bit of fame  
Graced his walls inside a frame:  
Cover quotes and stars galore  
A ninety five tomato score  
His trophy case kept on growing  
Wider, taller, more statues showing!  
But to Schmitty's eyes, those statues burned  
Because he knew they were not earned  
Late one night, he got to thinking  
(Shock of shocks, he had been drinking)   
He remembered the Devil's spell  
Good reviews, then straight to hell!  
But what if the reviews went poof?  
What could Satan use as proof  
That he had kept his hellish deal?  
And with a fury-matching zeal,  
Schmitty smashed against the wall  
Causing the reviews to fall  
In their frames, upon his head  
Bang, crash, smash, ouch, dead  
Then the trophy case did open wide  
And dragged poor Schmitty's soul inside  
In vain, he reached for his guitar  
But found his hands had turned to tar  
His tongue as well was turned to puss  
As his grammys chanted "One of us!"  
As he travelled through the shelves  
He saw at once his many selves  
Singer, failure, moron, dupe  
Look how low he'd had to stoop  
With one final look at his tomato score  
He saw the deal was no more  
In the wake of his untimely death  
The goodwill was gone, like mayfly's breath  
He was passed across all mass-media  
And became a dead-link on Wikipedia  
Soon forgotten and gone away  
And, now, tortured every day  
Pity bitty Schmitty Blues  
Sold his soul for good reviews


End file.
